COVER/Donna Ladd

Rebel with a Cause

Progessives Write Off Southern Whites at their Peril

No one gets the Confederate flag problem. I grew up in Mississippi
surrounded by rebel battle flags, big and small, and I didn't get it
then. I live in Mississippi now, and I still don't really know
exactly what the flag means.

It's a complicated symbol, with race at its center, and it's
included in my state's official emblem. It certainly is an emblem of
race violence. It also stands for southern defensiveness and anger at
"outsiders" who sweep all folks down here into one big, racist tent.
It stands for seething fury over the "Lost Cause," and the economic
devastation that came after the Civil War and Reconstruction. It is a
symbol of defiance for poor whites who want to feel like they're
better than somebody else. And it is a way to get easy votes in a
state that hasn't faced its race legacy, as lobbyist Haley Barbour
proved last week as he won a narrow victory here, after garnering the
latent angry white vote, yes, by wrapping himself in the rebel
flag.

I decided to return to my home state after 18 years away the day
after Mississippi voted two-to-one to keep the Confederate battle
emblem in our state flag. I hate the flag and everything it stands
for, and I want to write stories that will help it rot off the pole
some day in sheer irrelevance. But I know that it's not as simple as
writing off the folks who find some sort of twisted hope or pride in
the flag. And it's certainly more than a political football to be
passed at will.

On that point, I'm with presidential candidate Gov. Howard Dean:
the Democratic Party, or someone other than the far right, ought to
be talking to southerners (or non-southerners; been to Idaho or Ohio
lately?) who display the battle emblem in their pickups or their SUVs
or their dorm rooms. If you understand the simmering racist anger in
this country at all, you should know why this is important to do. And
you'll also know that we Southerners don't do it nearly enough.
Still, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards echoed racist voices of the
past when he chastised Dean during a debate: "Let me tell you, the
last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and
telling us what we need to do."

Gov. Dean did not say that the party should condone the
Confederate battle flag; he said they should talk to and appeal to
those voters because they have more in common with Democrats than
with Republicans who have been playing them for too long. And he is
very correct. Most of the same, often young, white men, who replace
something that's missing in their lives -- usually hope -- with
the rebel flag are being used by the current-day Republican Party
ever since Barry Goldwater birthed the "Southern Strategy" in the
1960s.

This strategy really hit its stride back in 1980 when Ronald
Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the Neshoba County
Fair, just nine miles from where civil rights workers James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were buried by Klansmen back in
1964. Rebel battle flags were everywhere during the fair in 1980, as
they were this July as Haley Barbour and other candidates spoke
there. Reagan came to Neshoba County to take advantage of the
ignorance and fear of my people. He fanned the flames of racism --
making it palatable to a national audience including lots of rich and
educated folk from coast to coast. Since then, the rebel battle flag
has symbolized a resurgence of race hatred and distrust that can be
attributed directly to the New Republican Party.

This wink-wink strategy of using coded (and not-so-coded) racism
to appeal to southern white voters is despicable, at least as much as
actually riding around Union, Miss., with a Confederate flag in your
pick-up truck. Worse to me is that poor whites are being used in such
a dramatic, blatant, dishonorable way, and they don't even get
anything in return. Not better jobs (thanks, NAFTA). Not better
education (thanks, re-segregation and now No Child Left Behind). Not
a union to back them up. Certainly not high-paid cushy jobs in
Washington. They, in a phrase, are played for idiots.

Now, if you are one of the Democratic candidates for president
or, say, a national journalist who can't see beyond the end of your
elitist nose, then why should you give a damn about what them good
young boys think down here? They don't matter. They're racists, you
might say; let 'em go rot in their own ignorant juices. You would be
wrong. And naïve.

The truth is, these young men driving around in pick-ups with
Confederate battle flags (and stickers and license plate holders and
t-shirts and tattoos) are across America, and they are frustrated
about the economy, and they are trolling for a scapegoat. They even
vote from time to time -- especially if the candidate massages
their fears and flashes their symbols.

Back during the 2000 election debacle, I went to Florida for the
Village Voice, and looked into racist groups lurking around West Palm
Beach. I talked to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center
about why there was a new wave of race hatred sweeping the country. A
frustrated white underclass is rapidly growing in America, Potok
said, as decent-paying jobs increasingly go to better-educated
immigrants, leave the country or are made obsolete by technology.
''We can go on until the cows come home about low unemployment. The
starker reality is a guy who was making $60,000 as a welder is now
lucky to make $15,000 managing a fast-food restaurant,'' Potok said
then, adding that it was naïve to be surprised by the American
"red-blue" cultural divide that was highlighted by the 2000 election.
''The fact is, the radical right has plainly described that split for
many, many years, and they're not wrong," he added.

Thus, when Howard Dean says that the Democratic Party --
supposedly the "party of the people" these days -- must reach out
to disaffected whites, he's right, no matter what John Kerry and Al
Sharpton and John Edwards say. Does that mean, like Haley Barbour and
friends, that progressives should start waving the Confederate battle
flag? Hell, no. But they also shouldn't be using complex symbols for
cheap votes.

It means that we need to recognize the actual problems in
America, even in the South, where so much electoral power rests.
Instead of writing off angry and fearful whites, progressives must
take their concerns and problems seriously and talk directly to them
as often as possible about exactly what's happening to jobs and
security in America. We can't just pretend they're not there. They
are there -- here -- and, as we saw vividly in Mississippi
gubernatorial election, they vote. We ignore these fellow Americans
at our own peril.

Donna Ladd is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Jackson
Free Press (www.jacksonfreepress.com).